Air Asia X announces Barcelona and Istanbul

Air Asia X, the long haul arm of the famous low cost carrier has officially announced its return to Europe with the launch of new flights to Barcelona and Istanbul each respectively.

It will operate the route on a daily basis using an A330-300 as KUL-IST-BCN v.v. effective 30OCT16 using the below mentioned schedule:

D7 001 Dep KUL1000 Arr IST 1500 // Dep IST1630 Arr BCN– 1920
D7 002 Dep BCN 2050 Arr IST 0120+1 // Dep IST 0250 Arr KUL 1930

Comments:

It is highly surprising to see a carrier launch a new daily service to IST this fall season considering the on going political unrest in Turkey. In addition, D7 is flying from the on set a daily service to 2 new long haul destinations by giving the market only 2 months advance awareness notice which is not enough. 

IST is a big market from KUL seeing 96,000 passengers in 2015 but that was when things were stable law and order wise in Turkey. As far as BCN is concerned, the demand from KUL in 2015 was 17,000 pax however the main aim for both these destinations is to feed on to other Air Asia flights via KUL to Austral-Asia. Demand from IST to SE Asia is very big however from BCN it isnt and considering its a two stop product on offer versus one stop on EK/QR/TK/LH/AF/KL/LX, BCN will be a tough nut to crack as these legacy carriers wont cede market share to D7 that easily !